Wild Burn (15 page)

No one followed them.

Still, he hurried her toward her cabin, fighting for balance on the uneven terrain as loose rock shuffled beneath the soles of his boots. “You good, honey?” he grunted, squeezing her hand and pulling her toward the cabin.

“F-fine.” She panted. “You?”

“Fucking dandy.” He yanked open the door of her cabin and hustled her inside. Another scan told him the three dog soldiers he’d left alive hadn’t given chase through the thick stand of trees at the top of the hill. He shut the door. “You have a gun here?”

Moira was bent at the waist, one hand flattened over her stomach and the other on her knee as she gasped for breath. She lifted the hand propped on her knee to point at her bedside table as her harsh inhalations filled the small room.

There, hooked listlessly over a bent nail, was a pathetically dainty Colt revolver, its handle inlaid with mother-of-pearl and etched with silver filigree. “This ain’t a gun,” he muttered as he snatched it, checked the chamber, then spun it into place and stalked to the window overlooking the hill.

Nothing and nobody had followed them over the ridge, but Del stood there, trying to catch his breath as he listened to Moira attempt to gain control of hers. No one moved in the shadows of the forest, and no arrows rained down on the cabins below. And though Del strained his ears, he couldn’t hear a single shout proclaiming imminent attack.

After several long moments, he uncocked the little pistol and turned from the window, letting the curtain fall back into place. “Looks like they’re g—” When his gaze landed on Moira, who was wheezing painfully, he crossed the cabin floor in three strides. “Breathe, Moira.” He tossed the Colt onto the bedspread and reached for her.

“Can’t,” she gasped. “C-corset.” She began to tug the tails of her shirt from her waistband, her hands shaking. Nearly all the color had leached from her freckled cheeks.

“Shush, now,” he soothed, though he felt far from calm as he brushed her fingers aside and made quick work of the large ivory buttons holding closed her light blue linen blouse from neck to navel. Soon he was sliding the garment from her shoulders and pulling at the exposed laces of her suffocating corset. “Shh, just breathe.” But he worried the words were more for him than for her as he attempted to blank his mind from the tempting sight before him.

The plumped tops of her breasts, small and high and firm, brushed the backs of his knuckles with her every unsteady breath. So he tugged and yanked and tugged some more, until he could peel the stiff, boned undergarment away from her rib cage. When freed from its confines, she sucked in desperate gulps of oxygen, and Del slid his hands between the gaping corset and her chemise-covered torso to grip her slender waist. She was small even without the shaping lingerie, and warm to his touch.

As her breathing grew easier, steadier, she swayed on the spot and looked up at him. A pink flush bloomed erratically across her cheekbones as she met his gaze with big blue eyes turned weary, auburn lashes long and fluttering. With a sigh, she stumbled into him, her forehead coming to rest against his bearded chin as her hands settled on his chest.

For a minute, he just stood there, staring over her head at the closed door of her cabin. She’d lost her hat sometime during their escape, and her dark red hair had slipped from its pins to tumble haphazardly around her sweet round face and over her vulnerable nape. Unable to resist, he lifted a hand to the back of her neck while his other curved around beneath her corset to palm the base of her spine. Her thin shift clung damply to the skin there, perspiration making the fabric stick to her like a pond leech.

She sighed again when his lips dipped to press a firm kiss to her clammy forehead. “Delaney,” she whispered hoarsely. “What…what
was
that?”

“That,” he spoke against her perspiring skin, “would be the party of dog soldiers I’m supposed to hunt down.”

“Oh.” The tips of her fingers curled into his chest, her nails a pleasant dig through his shirt, one that had a quick shiver zipping down his spine. “Are you all right?”

“Fine. You?” He stroked a thumb over her nape, not wanting to revisit the fear that had struck him when he had comprehended she could be killed. That involved a more thorough examination of his emotions than he was comfortable with at the moment.

“Fine, now that I can breathe again.” She huffed out a laugh, one he could feel on the exposed skin above his collar. “Somehow, I doubt this is what you had in mind when you asked me to step out with you today.”

He dropped another kiss on her temple and directed her closer with the hand on her back, needing the contact as much as she’d needed air earlier. “Not exactly. I’m sorry, Moira.”

“Don’t be.” She nestled deeper into his embrace, one hand absently petting his pectoral. His nipple hardened under the attention, but he didn’t shift away, even as her head came to rest on his shoulder. “At least you’re back to calling me Moira again.”

He chuckled. “Nothing like a little roulette with death to put the necessity of manners into perspective.” He held her to him, unwilling to let her go, though should anyone walk by her cabin and peek through the curtains they’d be greeted with quite the scandalous sight, considering her state of undress. “I wouldn’t have let them hurt you.”

Sighing, she leaned back to stare up at him, the clean, clear blue of her gaze filled with affection…and sadness. “I know you would’ve done your best to protect me, Delaney. But sometimes, there’s nothing you can do, and it wouldn’t be your fault.”

His grip on her neck tightened momentarily, then gentled again. He didn’t like the way she said that, with resignation in her voice and calm acceptance in her words. “Moira, I—”

“Thank you for saving me today. I’m quite sure I would’ve died in that clearing without you. Or worse.”

She was shaking, he realized. His hands came to her shoulders to steady her—maybe to steady himself too, because he sure as hell didn’t want to consider the “or worse” part of her statement. His stomach clenched as guilt began to niggle at him. “I, uh, told the sheriff that I didn’t think the dog soldiers were comin’ to Red Creek.” His ears grew hot at the admission.

She backed away from him until he was forced to release her. She didn’t seem to notice her deshabille, unconcerned with the pretty picture she presented to him with her rumpled, unlaced garments and her too-touchable skin. “When did you talk to Sheriff Nelson?”

“Earlier. Before I came to the schoolhouse.” Frustrated with himself, he snatched the hat from his head and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Told him I was leaving town.”

For the first time all afternoon, she wouldn’t look him in the eye. “And are you? Leaving town?” She began rhythmically retying her corset strings.

He watched her dress, frowning as he listened to the swish and pull of the laces, followed by the inevitable creak of boning as she tightened her garments back into primness. That primness had nothing to do with her former life as a nun, but rather the careful manner in which she usually carried herself. Her sharp tongue often belied the fact that she’d made herself into a lady—slums, Sister Verity and all.

Slapping the hat back on his head, he cleared his throat. “You know how to use that thing?” He gestured to the pistol on the bed with a jerk of his thumb.

“I have the basic idea, yes.” She latched the top hooks of the corset together, then began to button her blouse, still refusing to meet his gaze.

His jaw clenched. This wasn’t the conversation he’d wanted to have with her this afternoon. Nothing was going according to plan, but he’d lost his plan the moment Cloud Rider’s band had appeared in the clearing. And that? Well, that was something he couldn’t ignore, not after Moira had had to run for her life today.

“Well, honey, I’m not leaving town ’til you learn how to shoot.”

She aimed a brief, tense glare at him, her fingers still working the buttons of her shirt. “Then you might as well leave now. I bought that Colt myself, before I left Boston. The man who sold it to me wouldn’t let me have it until I knew how to work it.”

He scowled back at her. “That’s not the same thing as shooting what you aim for. So I’ll be teaching you.”

“Oh?” She crossed her arms over her chest.

He took a step toward her. “Yeah. And you’ll be carrying that tiny little thing with you from now on, everywhere you go.”

Closing the gap between them, she let her forearms bump into his chest, aggressive and inciting. “Something you should know about me, Delaney, is that I don’t especially like being told what to do.”

He almost smiled. “I know.” Tugging lightly on the brim of his hat, he sidestepped her and headed for the door, holding his breath until he had his hand on the knob. “Shooting lessons start tomorrow, Moira.”

She growled, and he could’ve sworn he heard her gnashing her teeth as he stepped out into the late-afternoon sunshine.

“That’s Miss Tully to you,
Captain
Crawford,” she called after him, ice in her tone.

Served him right. “Ma’am,” he said over his shoulder, and shut the door behind him.

Chapter Seventeen

Moira seethed for the rest of the afternoon and well into Saturday morning.

It was far easier to hold on to her irritation with Delaney Crawford for a host of reasons—his domineering attitude, his decision to leave Red Creek, his
mistaken
conclusion about the Cheyenne dog soldiers—than to give in to fear.

The fear was there, simmering beneath the surface of her skin, snaking around bone and muscle in the wending rivers of her veins, and if she thought on it, she started to tremble. Cold sweat beaded at her temples and her nape. Nausea curled low in her abdomen, and her wrists began to ache, and she wanted nothing more than to bury herself in the blankets and pillows of her bed and never step foot outside her door again.

Her safe haven was no longer safe.

She stood in her cabin, staring unblinkingly at her closed door. It didn’t seem all that sturdy anymore, just a too-thin plank of worn, sanded pine with a simple latch and no lock.

Why wasn’t there a lock?

Last night, though she wished for a chain or a bolt, she’d lugged her trunk in front of the door, sweating by the time she maneuvered it into place. The effort was worth it, because she’d been able to fall asleep knowing she had bought herself a few precious seconds to grab her gun and aim for any intruder attempting to get past the heavy trunk.

But now,
now
, she was frozen in place, her clammy palms stroking restlessly over the dark brown broadcloth of her skirt. She’d long since moved her trunk, having woken hours earlier, and nothing stood in her way. Nothing except a mountain crawling with savage, bloodthirsty Indians that Delaney had, until it was nearly too late, assumed were a figment of the sheriff’s imagination.

Perhaps that was overstating the situation, but Moira struggled against a haunting sense of betrayal. Not betrayal by the captain so much as by the town of Red Creek. Silly of her, to depend so deeply and so silently upon a community in which she was still a newcomer, but she had done so nonetheless. She’d needed safety. She’d needed security.

She’d needed to know that a drunken Union soldier wouldn’t push her into an alleyway and rape her, covering her mouth with his hand as she screamed and thrashed, while he shoved her against a brick wall and bunched her skirts around her waist.

She stared at the closed door of her cabin and gasped for breath, hot tears stinging the inner corners of her eyes, and— “Damn it,” she whispered, feeling her cursing was justified. “I want to be safe. I…I
will
be
safe.” She sniffed noisily, wiping her face with vicious swipes of her hands. Perhaps if she told herself that, over and over, the refrain would somehow make it more true. She checked the pocket of her skirt for the loaded Colt revolver—because if the refrain didn’t work, the gun certainly would—and reached for the door handle.

She’d meant what she said to Delaney yesterday. Sometimes, bad things happened, and there was nothing one could do to stop those things. She was as safe here as she had been while cloistered with the nuns in Boston, and certainly safer when she walked alone to run errands—a benefit of being the small town’s schoolteacher, and a relatively well-liked teacher at that. She had her home, her firearm and a small but growing circle of friendly acquaintances.

The sudden appearance of a few angry Indians wasn’t going to keep her from her new life.

She liked this life. She earned a nice wage as a teacher, and she wore the sort of dresses she’d always envied the city women when she herself was relegated to plain black habits. It was her choice if she nailed a cross over her bed or knelt before the hearth to pray morning and night. She read what she wanted, sang bawdy songs the miners’ children taught her and kissed smoldering former Confederate captains behind the schoolhouse.

This was her life, hard-won and imperfect and beloved just the same. She owned it, and no one would make her want to run away again. No one.

But until she could shore up her ill-used defenses, she was going to stay angry with Delaney.

As the noontime sun beat down on her exposed head, she marched determinedly to her neighbor’s door and rapped her knuckles on its slightly warped surface.

John White Horse opened to her with a tentative smile. “Miss Tully.” His voice was soothing in its familiarity.

They hadn’t spoken since the incident with Jacob Matthews at the schoolhouse. Though his expression had remained stoic during Matthews’s rant, Moira had seen his discomfort. It wasn’t only she who had been insulted, but John as well, and the only way they could move past the incident was to destroy any lingering awkwardness between them. Treating him as her friend, no different than she had done for months, was the best option. “John. How is your shoulder today?”

He lifted the body part in question, his smile relaxing a bit. “I’m healing quickly.”

“Good.” She drew in a breath and looked up at him, shading her eyes with the flat of her hand. “I have a favor to ask of you.”